With a history spanning more than 20 years, Ticket to Ride has earned its status as classic. Its easy gameplay and the many varied challenges it gives players makes it a favorite among many players and a very good choice to initiate people in the world of board games.

The original game showed a map of the US and several of its main cities which have railway connections, with guest appearances of Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Each city is connected to one or more of its neighbours with either colored paths or grey paths. To start things, players must choose destination tickets which connect two cities, the longer the distance the more points it awards. and during the game they will claim routes on the map in order to complete those tickets. Players can pick new tickets at any time, but they must be not too ambitious because non-completed tickets at the end of the game actually lower your final score instead of raising it!

During the game, a set of cards representing different train cars and each having its own color will be used. There also exist locomotives, which are rainbow colored and have special properties we'll see below. Each player gets its starting hand of 4 cards, chooses its destination tickets to complete among the first three handed to them (they must always choose a minimum of one, so pick carefully) and puts their marker in the scoreboard in the outer part of the board. Then, a pool of five face-up train cards is placed alongside the deck and each player is given the 45 trains of any given color, and the game can start.

Players can perform a single action every turn out of the three possible ones: draw cards, claim routes or draw new destination tickets. They can draw two cards from either the face-up ones (a new one is revealed immediately after one is picked) or the top of the deck, in any combination. The catch is that locomotives count as two cards due to their properties, so picking a face-up one means you get no second card, and obviously after picking a card either face-up or from the top of the deck you can't choose a face-up locomotive. You get lucky if you get a locomotive when drawing from the top of the deck, since it was face-down it acts as any normal card. Pay attention to what everyone is picking up, they might inadvertently hint at which routes they're aiming for.

Claiming routes means players must discard the number of cards according to the length of the route, from one to six. They must be of the matching color or use any number of locomotives, which can be used as if they were any other color. If the route is grey, then any color can be used but only cards of a single color and/or locomotives may be used. Players also put their trains over the route they've claimed, and depending on its length it awards a different number of points which are added to the score immediately. When playing 2-3 players only one of the double routes between cities may be used, in 4-5 players games both can be claimed, so keep that in mind.

When drawing new destination tickets, they draw three new ones and pick at least one to keep. You may want to do this after you've completed the first set, you never know when you draw a new ticket that covers two cities you have already connected. Be careful in the late game, you may not have enough trains or no chance of connecting the two cities and will end up lowering your score.

Once a player claims a route and is left with 2 or less trains in their stash, the final round is triggered. All players, ending with the one that triggered the final round, get one last turn before counting scores. To the already earned points for completing routes we add the points of all completed tickets and substract the points of the incompleted ones. After this, the longest continuous route of trains is counted, and the one who has the longest earns the special card and a 10 point bonus, which can sometimes turn the tables.

This was the basic version that premiered, and on itself is a very good game. It received a few expansions with more destination tickets and such, but later on it would get a ton of new versions. Europe brings a couple new concepts like tunnels and stations, Switzerland also adds a small twist by connecting countries in addition to cities thanks to the country's several borders, India added a new endgame bonus... And a lot more maps existing around, with or without any changes in the rules or endgame scoring.

I must say I love this one, though I've tried Europe and I personally like it more. Switzerland can be painful sometimes but it's also very enjoyable, while I haven't really felt nothing from India. I've played the standard and Europe in real life, and all four in Board Game Arena (who are on the lookout for more maps and expansions), and it could be a great ddition to my personal collection for being quite easy and accessible.

Its success also spawned other versions, like a card game, a kids version and more. Definitely one of the most expanded-upon games due to its versatility and accessibility, and personally I recommend it to everyone to try out and explore the many maps and expansions it has.

Over the years, it's been re-released and translated into a ton of languages, though curiously not all translations include the title. For example, the Spanish and German versions do have a translated title, whereas the Dutch and Italian versions haven't. Quite a curiosity to round up the immense history of this game.

I love this game! We own the North American version but I've also played Europe for sure. I prefer the North American version because that's where I live and what I'm used to but I do like the difficulty that the Europe version has in some areas. And I'm not as familiar so I don't immediately know which cards to keep or which routes I need and I find that more enjoyable.